QuickStart Blog

Become a (File) History Major with Windows 10

Microsoft added a new way to access File History in Windows 10. Windows 10's File History is an easy way to get started with backing up your personal files. The feature takes snapshots of versions of your files and stores them on an external hard drive.

Over time, you build up a library of past versions that you can recover if need be. Say, for example, you really liked a sentence from the first version of a document, but you deleted it long ago and are now battling with regret.

You can dip into File History, retrieve the right version of your document, and copy the sentence.

In Windows 10, you can still get at File History from the Control Panel, but there's also an easier way via the Settings app. To access this version, open the Settings app and go to Update & Security > Backup.

File History backs up protected folders into a folder hierarchy, in which the top folder has as its name the user principal name (UPN), the first-level subfolder has as its name the name of the computer from which it is protecting data, and the second-level subfolders are named Configuration and Data.

File History backs up the data itself into subfolders of the Data folder. For example, the folder hierarchy for a user named j_mag in the computer will be in the following folder: (D:\File history\user\pc\data\drive\users\user)